Basic Statistics: Tales of Distribution

This 'friendly,' accessible textbook emphasizes the analysis of empirical data, which helps students learn to select proper statistical analyses for problems, explain why an analysis is appropriate, calculate the statistics, and write explanations of what the analyses show. Designed to help students develop an intuitive understanding of statistical reasoning, the book gives thorough explanations and presents interesting problems that emphasize the analysis of data rather than mathematical statistics, providing the student with a conceptual understanding and a mastery of computational formulas. Problems, which are an integral part of the text, are from the fields of psychology, sociology, nursing, biology, education, and business. ..In addition, Spatz tells the story of the history of statistics in a friendly style. Some of the questions that pioneers such as Galton, Fisher, Pearson, Gosset, and Quetelet researched are used as worked-out examples or given as problems, giving students a glimpse of the excitement that prevailed when statistics as a field was just beginning.

Chris Spatz earned a Ph.D. from Tulane University in experimental psychology. He subsequently held NSF and NIMH postdoctoral fellowships in animal behavior at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. He is a professor of psychology at Hendrix College, Conway, Arkansas. Spatz also held positions at The University of the South and the University of Arkansas at Monticello.